Liekens, Janssens

The house of Jo Liekens and Nel Janssens is conceived as a living experiment rather than a conventional dwelling. It questions the taken-for-granted separation between interior space and soil by allowing the ground, climate, and more-than-human life to remain present within daily inhabitation. Through temporary structures, minimal foundations, and thin boundaries, the house stays closely connected to the earth beneath it, resisting the idea of the interior as a sealed and controlled environment. Natural forces such as light, darkness, temperature, moisture, and seasonal change directly influence the atmosphere of the space, creating an interior that is simultaneously protected and exposed.

Living in the house requires continuous acts of care, maintenance, and attentiveness, shifting the role of architecture from one of control to one of responsibility. Soil is treated not as an inert surface but as a living, vibrant entity that participates in the interior as a co-inhabitant. Human residents, plants, animals, and microorganisms form a shared ecology in which kinship replaces dominance. By allowing growth, decay, dirt, and unpredictability to enter the interior, the house embraces a form of rewilding that challenges conventional ideas of comfort and cleanliness. In doing so, it proposes an ethical model of living that acknowledges interdependence and redefines inhabitation as a caring practice within a fragile world.

"Wildness is not excluded but invited into everyday living."

Soil

"Soil is not a surface to build upon, but a deep, living world to live with."

Care

“Architecture becomes an act of caring rather than controlling.”

Rewilding

Kinship

"Inhabitation here is a shared life between people, soil, plants, and atmosphere."

MAKING
TIME
for
SOIL

We set out to imagine a new kind of world, shaped by a different way of thinking and making.
We ask how time is experienced, and how the way we spend it shapes the spaces we inhabit.

The earth is far from passive; it is a living that constantly works beneath our feet.